It's 6:30 am and I roll through the forest on my way to work, rain drops trickling down my glasses. My bike ride to work is a sanctuary, a time to spend with the morning air while my thoughts come and go like the streetlights I pass. I ride my summer bike Swallow. I gave her that name one bright summer morning when she cut through the air like a swallow. As soon as there is ice or snow on the ground, I will switch to my spiked winter bike Sigrid. She is my hero when the ground can’t be trusted. I remember my very first bike, white with pink dots. I'm sure she too had a name. My father has four bikes, all named if I remember correctly. I was an adult when I realized my first bike probably hadn't been bought with the dots; my father must have painted her into the beauty she was.
I ride my bike to the office all year round and welcome the elements against my skin. I can endure pouring rain, snowstorms and plowing through heavy thaw. I can't knit on the saddle, though, and sometimes I envy people who knit on their commute to work.
With these thoughts bobbing in my mind, I roll down the lane, mossy rockface to my left and wooded hillside to my right, steering my bike through drifts of autumn leaves. A streetlight blurs my vision even more through the wet glasses, and in the corner of my eye I see something. I turn my head and find myself riding side by side with an ant. She is riding a white bike, ant-scaled street signs edging her path. ”That’s interesting”, I say to myself and peer closer to see what an ant bike looks like. Will it have an extra set of treadles? Or a third wheel? I’m surprised to find that the ant bike looks pretty much like mine.
I decide to call the ant Myra. Aside from being a fully functional name, it’s a word in Swedish, meaning, well, ant. Myra looks quite content on her bike, treadling along with her back legs, Thorax stretched and alert, center hands resting attentively on the handlebar. With her front hands she is knitting, the teal coloured yarn perfectly complementing the autumn leaves.
Her compound eyes make it possible to see in the dark while keeping an eye on both the road and the needles – superpowers any knitter would happily sacrifice their yarn stash for. I look at her bike again and smile when I see pink dots all over both it and her helmet.
Myra seems to be knitting in the round, in stockinette stitch. "Brilliant!", I say to myself – any knitter knows not to knit lace or colourwork while commuting, it's too big a risk. You don't want to unpick a lace pattern sandwiched between three other commuters or crawl around the metro floor in rush hour looking for lost balls of blue. "Or get the yarn tangled between the spokes", I add, giggling.
I wonder where she keeps her yarn. A moving knitter must have a safe and practical arrangement for the yarn. It turns out Myra has threaded the centerpull ball – hand wound it seems – onto her left back leg, yarn moving from the ball to her left front hand. Aahh, a felllow continental knitter, I see. A basket on her rear rack reveals the rest of the skeins.
I think about how her choreography of pedaling and knitting feels, if it enhances her sense of bodily and mental movement. I wonder how her thoughts flow in the process, what problems she solves or conundrums she unravels as she knits her way past naked trees and soft light cones.
We ride down the lane side by side. There is a gentle rustling sound as her wheels plow through the autumn leaves and a cozy clicking from her needles. Together with the more muffled rustle from the leaves under my bike we compose an autumnal song, a rustle-rustle click click in A minor. A sweet pace for biking, no doubt.
Everything else is quiet. The air is fresh, cooling down my flushing cheeks, but it’s not too cold for my hands. They are mittened, and I look with curiosity at hers – center hands on the handlebar mittened too, and one knitting front hand bare. The fourth mitten is in the making on her needles. Of course! I wonder if she is planning to knit through her winter bike rides when the mitten is finished and she can wear the whole quartet. Perhaps she will knit a sweater next, one that falls into her lap, keeping her thorax and back legs warm as she knits her way up to the neck. Or is she a top-down knitter?
I look at the sky, grateful for this morning. The day is breaking and the streetlights flicker and go out. It has stopped raining, and my glasses are reasonably clear again. I look for the ant, but she has vanished. The trace of her bike is gone too and I wonder if she has really been there. Perhaps she was just a figment of my imagination. I sigh and place her gently in my crystal bowl of bike ride memorabilia. The next second I see a peppercorn sized ball of yarn on the bike path. I pick it up and put it in my mitten for good luck, sense a soft shiver from feet to crown and move on to the office.
Started my day with a smile! Thank you!
Fascinating! We name our bikes too. Will keep an eye out for Myra next time I’m on mine…